South Africa Conference & Workshop
Protea Hotel, Wonderes, Illovo, Johannesburg 28 - 30 Janurary 2010

Presenter Biographies

STEVE SZEWCZUK

CURRICULUM VITAE

Stefan Szewczuk holds a BSc Aeronautical Engineering degree and an MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand and an MBA from the Herriot-Watt University in Scotland.  At present he is the Research Group Leader for the Rural Energy & Economic Development group in the Built Environment at the CSIR.  Stefan’s primary interests are in wind energy, distributed generation and conversion of organic waste to biogas.

DESCRIPTION OF PRESENTATION

Topic

Distributed provision of energy services and the potential use of decision support systems to identify projects

Brief Description

At present the bulk of the world’s supply of energy, for example electricity and liquid fuels, is provided in large centralised power stations and facilities that are large distances away from the load centres and markets. This approach, one of ‘economy of size’, generates power in large, efficient power stations and facilities and is delivered to load centres and markets via an extensive logistical network of wires and transport routes. An alternative approach, that of distributed generation (DG), can be described as ‘economy of mass production’; power is generated by many more smaller plant located near to load centres. This approach makes relatively little contribution to the world’s energy production, but is gathering momentum.

This presentation will discuss various CSIR activities related to distributed power production, the development of decision support tools that could assist with the identification of distributed power production projects. An overview will also be provided of projects undertaken and technologies that are being investigated to that could provide distributed power. Once such technology or rather an integrated set of technologies is entitled Integrated Research Infrastructure Platform (IRIP) and is geared towards the provision of energy, water and the treatment and recycling of waste for a community.